


Something of the Iris

by Barkour



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2477369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iris West has an up close and personal encounter with Central City's new celebrity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something of the Iris

**Author's Note:**

> Let the record show I wrote this on a whim after two episodes had aired.

The banquet ended ingloriously with the arrival of a final guest, the infamous Captain Cold (Captain Chill Out). The Skyline Arboretum sat perched at the top of one of Central’s larger skyscrapers. Iris had an excellent signal. At the very back of the clearing she typed out the last of the text to 911. Sending at last transitioned to sent. She left off biting her lip. Switching to another screen, Iris palmed the phone up her sheer sleeve.

“That’s it,” Sergeant Frostbite shouted, “all of it in the bag. Earrings, too, please, don’t be stingy.”

With her head lowered, Iris wedged forward. The crowd would not easily part. Of all things it was her university press badge that got her through. The banquet invite had come dearly: her professor had stressed what it had cost to get even the one seat. No Barry to entertain her with napkin origami through the self-congratulatory toasts from Central’s crustiest of upper crusts. No Barry, then, to worry about when the excitement started.

A carefully applied elbow cleared the last hurdle. “I’m so sorry,” Iris whispered to the gentleman, who’d turned all his indignation from the villain robbing them to her.

“And who invited her!” he was saying. “I don’t recognize her—”

Private Pill wafted his cartoon gun. “In the bag.” His gaze roamed the crowd. The goggles were too small for his face.

With her little finger she tapped the ‘record’ button on the phone hidden in her hand. 

“What were your credentials?”

“Excuse me?” he said.

“Excuse me?” said the gentleman she’d elbowed.

“Your rank,” Iris clarified. “You’re a captain?”

Cold stared at her. 

“What does that have to do with anything?” demanded the penguin at her back.

“That’s not—” Cold flapped his gun. 

Iris nudged her right foot closer. She kept her face tipped slightly down and her eyes peeking up.

“It’s just a name. Like—you know? Like Captain Crunch.” He squinted. “Don’t I know you? From TV?”

“Well, she’s not from TV—”

“I’m sure I’d remember you if we’d met,” Iris said quickly. Another tiny squinch of a step. Her phone grew slick in her grip. “You _are_ pretty memorable. What was it? Captain Crisp.” All of this so sweet.

“Captain _Cold_!” He’d let the bag fall to his side. “I only said it like twenty times—”

“He did shout it an awful lot,” an older woman muttered.

“I probably didn’t hear,” Iris allowed. “I was pretty far back when you came in.”

“ _Very_ uncouth of him,” someone else was saying.

Cold turned to the voice, and Iris lunged. 

She’d seen her father do it. She’d seen his old partner do it. She knew _how_ to do it, too, from the self-defense class Dad had signed her and Barry up for every spring, regular as clockwork: grab the arm. Grab the wrist. Don’t grab the gun. Twist the wrist back and let the gun fall to the ground. Kick it away. In class she’d made it. Clockwork.

Her phone slipped from her hand. Cold turned back to her. She got his arm but not his wrist. His eyes showed too large behind his too small goggles and their blue, bubble lenses. Like a fish staring out at her. 

He shoved; his arm smashed her chest. Iris stumbled into the crowd. The old woman who’d thought Cold uncouth caught Iris. She thought: Why did I wear heels to a greenhouse? Cold leveled the gun at her. 

“I remember now.” His voice was hard. “You’re Iris West. The blogger. Flash’s _fangirl_ —”

“You can’t get away,” Iris snapped. She stood, rising out of the woman’s hold. Briefly she squeezed the woman’s shoulder, to steady her in return. 

Iris gestured. “We’re at the top of the building. However you got up here in the first place, someone’s got to have noticed that Halloween costume. And you’re not going to make it down ninety floors.”

“So smart, huh,” said Cold. He smiled. He did look remarkably like a fish. “Well, Miss Iris West, do you know what happens to a tree when sap freezes?”

He fired behind her. She heard a soft hiss, and then a gunshot, so loud and so near her ears rang; her head numbed. Something lanced her cheek. Cold smiled again. Twice he tapped the side of the gun with his thumb, and:

She saw the stars through the glass walls. Captain Cold fired. Her mouth, so dry. She should have left the wine alone after the first glass. Warmth all about her and a static charge on her skin and the greatest heat was where the Flash’s hands were on her: one between her shoulder blades and the other beneath her knees.

He left her on the curb, a block away from the building. Iris gasped. From the street, she saw the arboretum twinkling, lit up from within. The air glinted: glass fell from on high to the pavement. The trees had burst.

The world rippled. Iris staggered a step on her heels. Heel. She’d lost a shoe in the wind. Then Flash was there. Right there. His hands warm on her. She dug her fingers into his padded nape.

“You’re bleeding,” he said. Words like mush: he spoke too swiftly. He brushed at her cheek, wiping the blood from her. His fingers hummed.

“There were forty-three guests,” Iris said. “There was a woman right beside me—”

“She’s fine,” Flash said, “they’re all fine, you’re the only one hurt—”

“It’s just a scratch.” She swatted at his hand. She meant to. Instead she clasped his wrist, and his fingers stilled along her jaw. “Captain Cold—”

Flash dimpled. He left his mouth bare. Thin lips. Thin jaw. White guy. He never had stubble.

“He’s out cold.”

Iris swallowed. “That was—that was really bad. That was so bad.”

His dimple, such as it was, deepened. “Not as bad as the headache he’ll have when he wakes up in his jail cell. That was quick thinking, texting 911.”

“My dad’s a detective,” Iris said. The pantyhose she’d put on for the evening was little barrier against the faint chill of the sidewalk. “You could probably say it came to me in a flash.”

His laugh was mostly in his smile. Thank God she hadn’t a seat for Barry. He would have done something brave, and silly. What if Flash hadn’t come to her in time?

Flash stroked her face. He was so very tall. His fingers so long. She gripped his shoulders. Her cheek was damp. She hardly felt it. Adrenaline. She remembered that much from freshman biology.

His lips pressed. Fingers fluttering once again over her cheeks. Her heart didn’t thrum. It didn’t skip. She heard it beat steadily, heavily.

Out of her pump, she stood on her tiptoes. He bent. Once, lightly, they kissed. She lingered there. He lingered too. His breath pricked her skin. She wondered how fast his heart beat. His eyes opened. His gaze flickered up to her. 

Hazel eyes in the gleam of the near street light. One more detail for the post she would not be writing about this. A laugh burbled in her. Very calmly she thought that perhaps she did not have as firm a grip on her emotions as she would like. Then she laced her fingers together at the back of his neck and pulled him to her. 

Flash came to her. His hands grazed her: over her sides, along her back, once into her hair and then quickly away again. He pulled at her, driving the kiss deeper. Her foot slipped out of the shoe she’d managed to hold on to. His mouth was the warmest of all. The tip of his tongue ran along her lip.

Flash said, “Wait,” ragged. Tongue still wet at the corner of her mouth. Iris set the toes of her right foot on his left boot and the toes of her left foot on his right boot, and she bit at his lip. His hand dropped to her waist. The other rubbed wild circles at the small of her back. He was moving; he moved with her. 

The glass front of the store shocked her, and Iris arched, grabbing at his neck. Flash squeaked. The hand at her waist convulsed. He made to pull from her. Embarrassed—as if she hadn’t heard way more embarrassing noises out of Barry’s mouth. 

The skin of his jaw was smooth on her palms. She held him there a moment. Another moment. His neck curved. His tongue was on her lip again. A muscle in his jaw roiled under her hand.

Iris was full as with air and with light, and she nipped at his tongue, and the tips of her fingers fitted beneath the edge of his mask. The stars were at his back. A siren neared. The arboretum was dark.

Flash said, “Iris,” very softly against her lips. She leaned away from him. Her thumbs were at each side of his mouth. The crooks in his skin were lined. So close now, she could not see the color of his eyes.

His shoulders had sloped. Iris licked her lip. His eyes dropped. The pull of his frown—hopeless—deepened. Did he know about Eddie? Her gut clenched. Eddie.

He rolled his lips. Even in the knotting horror she thought—she did not think—she wanted to kiss him again. To give what she wished, without reason, he would give her. And what did she know about Flash? He wasn’t Eddie. She didn’t know him. Iris wanted him to press her back against the glass and lean down and kiss her throat with his lips humming and his hands so hot on her hips.

“I think,” Iris said carefully, “that I should go to the emergency room. That it’s possible I’m not thinking clearly right now. A tree exploded close to my head.”

Flash stepped back. Her heels settled on the pavement. She curled her toes against the cold. His hands hovered at her arms. He did not touch her.

“You _are_ bleeding,” Flash said. Then he did touch her. Just the tip of one finger to her cheek.

“Will you please take me there?” Iris asked. She lifted her arms.

He was very much the gentleman, more so than the wealthy man who had demanded to know how she had got into so fine an event. Of the kiss, he said nothing. No questions. No crude remarks. Whoever he might be, she could expect discretion of him.

Flash wished her a good night, and that he hoped she would be all right in the morning, and that he looked forward to reading her reporting as he always looked forward to it. She wished him a good night, and thanked him for rescuing her yet again, and told him not to get his hopes up. She’d lost her phone and with it her notes.

The doctor shone a pen light into her eyes. 

“Good,” she said absently. “Strong reflex. Not a concussion, probably. How’s your head feel?”

“Fine,” Iris said. The ache was not physical in nature. She hadn’t thought of Eddie once as she kissed Flash, as Flash kissed her, as he’d born her back against the glass and she’d pulled him hard to her and opened her mouth beneath his mouth. She had thought of Barry, and a lopsided crane he had made of a cloth napkin at the last dinner to which he’d escorted her, and the cast of his smile when she brought him a coffee at work.

“Shaken,” she would say, “not stirred.”

He would roll his eyes. He usually did. “Ha ha ha,” he’d say. “Did you ask Joe if he wanted any joe?”

“Iris,” Flash had said. Her name hummed in his mouth. Iris. 

Iris had thought of Barry’s eyes.


End file.
